YouTube is now flagging accounts on Premium family plans that aren't in the same household
YouTube is now flagging accounts on Premium family plans that aren't in the same household
226 comments
-
-
Ahh classic, punishing paying costumers while pirates don't have to deal with any of this shit. I guess the beatings will continue until profits increase!
-
punishing paying costumers
Time to dress up as a pirate I guess.
-
-
Google really seems to want to disincentivize people paying for YouTube Premium rather than just downloading an ad blocker.
-
Yea. I mean, I pay for it right now because it’s easy and works on all my stuff but frankly they’re really making me weigh how much convenience really matters. This kinda behaviour’s pretty garbo.
-
-
Meanwhile on Steam my "family" consists of 3 adults with different addresses, last names, and credit cards, who have had accounts for decades and never lived at the same place.
We have full access to each other's library.
-
Gabe Newell is 62 years old. Gonna enjoy this gravy train while we can...
-
Man I hope he lives to a 100 at least, why am I always late to the party, I learn about Limewire and it dies the next year, I get access to my sister's Netflix account and Netflix goes to shit, I'm finally able to afford a gaming laptop and buy Steam games and now I'm too busy and tired from work to play them and Gabe is getting older. I wish I could go back in time and do things differently
-
My understanding is that gaben has already put an action plan in place for when the company moves on from his leadership.
From what I've heard of it, the people in line behind Gabe will be upholding the same values.
We should have at least another ~40 years or more of this before sometimes entitled brat inherits the company and sells it off to a foreign interest.
With all that being said: long live gaben.
-
Gaben is gonna be the first person to digitally upload their consciousness.
-
-
While steam has historically been "good", doesn't mean it'll stay that way...
-
Sure, the 2 constants in the universe are Entropy and Enshitification. When Steam turns to shit I'll go back to Piracy just like I did when Netflix went to shit.
My point is that companies don't have to be shit about account sharing and family plans, and people don't have to accept it.
-
It's mostly that a feature on it went from "okayish" to "far more consumer-friendly", which was incredibly unexpected of them to do. Everyone figured Steam library sharing would die but instead they roll out Family that has far looser restrictions than the system they'd had for over a decade.
Can't play the same game at the same time unless both own it, and DLC isn't shared, but my partner being able to play anything I own that I'm not playing is pretty rad of a positive change.
Meanwhile Nintendo's system got worse instead.
-
-
Didn't know steam even had a family option, it's good to know
-
It's pretty fantastic! In the past, you could share a library, and playing any game from that library would lock the entire library so others couldn't use it at the same time. Today, that is loosened up and is much nicer to use.
-
-
How do you add new people? I tried and a prompt told me that we don't seem to share a household.
-
I had that error a couple of times, and it inexplicably resolved itself. Try having the person join again (which may require a new invite). I think only 1 out of 4 members of my family were able to join without that initial error message. This was back when Steam had just switched how they handled family sharing, so I assumed it was just an implementation bug of some sort. One of my friends took three attempts before they could join, but it worked ¯(ツ)_/¯
Though I will note that steam family sharing no longer works if the person is located in another country for the purposes of Steam billing region (so my Norwegian friend could not join my UK family)
-
Login on their PC or let them login on yours
-
-
-
Fuck GOOG for normalizing surveillance capitalism
Fuck YouTube in particular for making it basically impossible to usefully host an Invidious proxy any more and for their algorithmic manipulationPeerTube is the Way
-
A big problem with peertube is monetization. There should be some sort of mechanism that'd do that automatically. Otherwise there won't be much content ever. Don't get me wrong, I'm really happy that it exists but just don't see it replacing even few % of YouTube as it is.
-
If you want monetization and scalability, you're gonna have to get ads. Ad-free subscription services that actually benefit the creators are exceedingly rare. Very few people (less than 0.1%) are "making it" on Patreon and the like. The bitter truth is that most users can't afford to financially support their favorite creators, and damn near zero creators could get the level of exposure needed to be sustainable without an ad-based platform backing them.
Video hosting is expensive af. Ultimately, small-time content creation is completely dependent on corporate benefactors. This is why every video platform that's tried to compete against YouTube has failed. Nebula is trying, but that's only useful to creators who fit within its specific niche.
I'm not saying this as a vote of support for the current system. Just an observation of how the market has played out so far.
-
Monetization itself is the problem.
-
Where would the money come from?
-
-
-
Gotta give it to them. They are extremely innovative in coming up with ways of enshitifying stuff.
-
I absolutely hate this stuff. My family doesn't live in the same house, but it doesn't mean we are not a family. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law just message us for the passwords when they want to stream something. None of us pay for youtube premium and it looks like I won't be.
-
As someone with divorced parents this invalidates what I call a "family". Same to you... Netflix
-
Why pay for premium anyway? Let alone a family plan. You still get ads. They can be skipped too — SponsorBlock will do it for free. Google could use this but chooses not to.
They want YouTube to be like cable TV. You pay for it. You watch ads. You pay more for premium channels.
-
I pay for it. No ads. Background playing on mobile, and YouTube music included.
-
Background playing on mobile
The fact that they put this behind a paywall is enough for me to never pay them a dime.
-
I do too but the value is waning. When I try to watch without having logged in and see all the ads, that add some value back
-
So you're using SponsorBlock as well, or you're watching videos without sponsors.
-
I dont pay for it, use grayjay or firefox with ad block, I have no ads, background playing on mobile and I could care less about YouTube music.
-
I just pirate it
-
NewPipe does this for free
-
-
I pay for it, also no ads except the sponsor plugs, which are pretty easy to skip. Overall a better experience than the non premium. I don't live in the USA so my cost is like $5/month.
-
The three people who replied before you said they don't get the sponsor plugs.
When I had YTP (I had a trial, it was like 3 months for $1), I got the sponsored segments. So either those other people are lying, or they don't understand what I'm saying.
-
-
YouTube is my only subscription.
I use it for Music and Video. I definitely get my money's worth, they're streaming to me at least 8 hours a day.
If it's not background music, it's videos. I can't even fathom how many hours of ads I have avoided.
-
same here, but even I'm looking to cancel both to avoid supporting a US company and because they're making my experience worse by having a shitty user experience
-
I've never seen a single youtube ad with uBlock Origin. SponsorBlock takes care of most of the sponsored segments that a premium youtube account won't get rid of.
-
-
You don't get ads. You pay less than double what two premiums cost and your household can share.
-
YouTube is fucking garbage.
I don't care about the ads because it's fucking garbage, and why would I watch garbage?
-
I pay for premium because currently it's the easier option for getting no Ads on all my devices. Yes I could install a third party client on my TV, Phone & use uBlock on Desktop, but two of those require active upkeep.
- YouTube Music is included.
For sponsorships, YouTube Premium has the "Skip Ahead" feature which basically leeches off sponsorblock users where commonly skipped sections can be also skipped by you.
It's just currently easier to pay than to pirate. I will say however, if it gets too shitty, I will resort back to pirating.
-
-
For those select few that have an iPhone
You have a few options:
- be EU citizen and sideload a cracked YouTube (similar to vanced, but you need certificates on iOS which sucks)
- pay for a dev account and sideload regardless of above
- buy two apps: vinegar and AdGuard. AdGuard speaks for itself, vinegar is a tool that forces YouTube to use the html 5 player inside of safari and thus forcing it to your will
I know iPhones are hated here, but I saw the android will stop sideloading coming from a mile away. At least here in the eu apple can suck one and I can still sideload whatever I want
-
I just use Brave on iOS. It works fine for YouTube.
-
you need certificates on iOS which suck
I can still sideload whatever I want
??
-
I got certificates
-
ergo, there are extra steps, which is a pita, but not insurmountable.
-
-
You can sideload up to three apps without a paid dev account, they just expire in 7 days. Use something like AltStore (or better yet SideStore) and you have an easy way to install and re-sign two other apps. They also have the ability to essentially “offload” apps so you can have more than two other sideloaded apps, but only two can be active at a time (other than the signing app)
-
Yeah or services as Signulous could take a bit of strain away if you don’t want to be limited by the 7 days and 3 apps limit
-
-
Vinegar seems awesome. Thanks! Also, the dev’s other apps are pretty amazing too!
-
Thanks! Will look into the other apps too!
-
-
And this still won’t be enough to stop people from using it.
-
it's because Youtube is a content monopoly. TikTok is a platform for short content...on youtube it's a feature with shorts. Twitch is a platform for live streaming content...on youtube it's a feature with, other than discoverability, the same features. Any music streaming service? again...it's a feature on youtube. The fact I could export my playlists from any music streaming platform and import it to Youtube and listen to it ad free via an ad blocker? come on. So as opposed to using multiple platforms, with youtube you have it all in one place. So no, this will not get people to stop using it.
Premium you don't need if you're even the slightest bit tech savvy. but no one is ever going to stop using youtube, there's no point. I mean I use peertube as much as possible but every now and then I'm back on youtube because of all those features in one place and some things I just can't find on peertube.
-
Or to start using it. I'm not sure I know anybody actually using it
-
-
This will be like Netflix pushing against shared accounts, sure it will work and their revenue will go up, but I will stop being a paying customer and will only watch videos from my notebook with adblocks.
-
So is it YouTube family or YouTube household?
Either way, probably need to setup site to site VPN and route YouTube traffic through a central location, if you can block geolocation.
-
Imagine paying for youtube lmao
-
That amount of money should go to Peertube instead…
-
-
Fuck em. We try to pay even tho we know how to get it for free. Go back to ad blockers.
Not a perfect experience but it’s better than putting up with that corporate bullshit.
-
Good thing I am never going to go youtube premium.
-
I think that's the point.
They've had such trouble even selling YouTube premium that now they're making it even less worthwhile, and expecting people to still buy it...
I don't know what companies don't get. Family means so many different things and they're trying to dictate and control what it means to be a family. They don't get to decide that. Many people I consider to be family, have zero blood relation to me, but they've stood by me like brothers and sisters when shit goes down, often staying to help long after my blood relatives, have abandoned me. The people I share a bloodline with are simply not as much of a family to me as these people I grew up with, and have stuck with me through thick and thin.
If I buy a "family" plan of anything, I expect that the family I've chosen can be among the people I can share that plan with. If I'm paying for a personal plan and sharing it with others, I get it, fair game. But if I'm specifically buying it because I can share it with family, then let me share it with family, or fuck the fuck off with that bullshit.
Sorry, bit of a rant, I know everyone here already knows this so I'm preaching to the choir.
Be well.
-
-
"There aren't enough seeds for these AI training data torrents we've been downloading. Anybody got any ideas?"
-
There are people actually paying for this crap?
-
I have a hot take. I pretty much exclusively watch YouTube as my form of TV entertainment. On most days, I watch many hours between putting something on to go to sleep or actually watching stuff in the day such as training courses or whatever. Sure, I could easily set up my TVs and devices to work around it, but I think it's actually worth it to just pay for Premium and not have the hassle. I feel I get more than my fair share out of it.
-
What I'm not ok with YouTube premium :
- The price is too high for a subscription. For that price I could get thousands of movies on a competing service like Netflix.
- Even if you take YouTube premium they are still farming your data and selling it to third parties.
So even if I watch a ton of YT I refuse to pay to sell my data.
If I pay for YT they have to not track me and not sell my data (at least data coming from YT).
So yeah taking YT is hassle free but is quite the scam if you think about it. Before paying you were the product. After paying you are still the product but on top of that you give them money.
-
Same here. I’ve cancelled Netflix, never got Disney plus, never use prime (though I think I have access to something through prime shipping).
YouTube however; I watch this every single day, use it for learning, relaxation, documentaries etc.
It’s a fantastic platform and well worth the subscription AFAICS.
-
-
I honestly wouldn't mind paying for it if it didn't feel like such a fucking rip-off.
For example, for £19 a month I could sub to Netflix top tier. For that, I and three others could watch their stuff in UHD, all at the same time. And sure, Netflix content might be somewhat average these days, but it's still reasonably high quality and costs a decent packet to produce.
By contrast, YT Premium for family is £20 a month, with which I can access a bunch of videos that, while enjoyable, do not cost Google anything to make. Yes, hosting costs money, and yes, they (theoretically) pay the video creators. But it doesn't feel like £20 a month, y'know?
Part of the trouble is that they lump YT Music in to the same subscription. But I don't want or need that. I have Apple Music with its lossless catalogue, and library that I've built up over many years. If YT offered a straight up ad-free plan that I could share with my family that cost a tenner a month, I'd probably go for it. It would mean being able to watch videos on Apple TV without having to fuck about downloading them to my Plex folder first, because they've injected SO MANY ADVERTS in now that the YT app is completely unusable.
-
YouTube pays about 50% of that to creators you watch according to what I’ve read
-
It’s too expensive agreed. However YouTube has a lot of discounted memberships through other services. I wouldn’t pay full price for it, but through my mobile phone company I get more than 50% off and that’s a bloody great deal.
-
-
-
Ill immediately cancel and goto pure piracy if they do this to me. I'm getting so tired of this shit 🥲
-
do it anyway. don't give money to google.
-
Easier said than done. My parents are the main reason I haven't, it's just easier to pay monthly than it is to fix their mistakes when they fuck up the things I try to setup.
-
-
You can always download the video with yt-dlp and watch it offline.
-
-
I use a VPN so yeah that's not going to work.
-
I suspect Google won't care if they "accidentally" lock VPN users out of YouTube Premium.
-
Just like Netflix
-
Considering 50% of gen Z use vpns, I think they might need to reconsider
-
-
YT Premium recently updated their terms to include a provision requiring that the majority of your use be from your home country. YT saw how everyone sucked the Netflix teat when they killed sharing, and now they want a piece too.
-
-
Amazon is doing the exact same thing. Just got an email today that they're shutting down the family Prime sharing thing. Had that for ten years now.
-
I really think corporations are starting to overplay their hands here. People don't need Prime as much as Amazon thinks they do, people don't need YouTube as much as Google thinks they do, and so on. Especially in the case of YT, yeah, turns out it's easy to compete when your service is free. But once it gets freemium enough, things like Peertube start to take a place on the optimal frontier. Right now Peertube only competes with YouTube if you're sensitive to the dimension of a service being centralized or not, most people don't give a shit about that. But the dimension of cost and ads? Enshittify YouTube too much and suddenly Peertube has its place for anyone who cares about money or time (i.e everyone).
And Prime? Don't think people won't start just going to stores again, or buying directly from producers. At least if I go to an actual website to buy my stuff I don't need to worry about getting ripped off by some drop-ship fake brand garbage.
People love their little conveniences and will try to hang on to them, sure...but I think this could really start to backfire if they push it much further.
-
Shipping is still free if orders are over $35. Add to cart, order when you have enough. Their 2 day shipping has become bs these days anyhow. "It's 2 days from when the order is processed." I bought the shit, money came out of my account, it's processed. I have made a legal exchange with the expectation that your mutli billion company can place an order and box shit near immediately from 50+ warehouses. I order in the morning, and you're telling me it took you 2 days to get that order with a preprinted label onto a truck?
-
I think it's important to keep expectations realistic though..
in the case of Youtube there are very few groups/companies/whatever that could keep up with that kind of bandwidth. Federation helps here but it's still a pretty niche thing for 99% of people who don't know/care and just want their social media/forum/video site to work.
-
-
No they are keeping the family plan but shutting down the non household sharing. Now it is "one additional adult and four kids."
-
What?!
-
Yeah, sucks. Give this a read.
-
-
-
So nice of them. They help me cut the strings to the last google service I was not quite committed to drop
-
I'm on my brother's premium. I told myself if my brother stopped wanting to pay for it I'd pay for it myself because I hate ads that much.
On the other hand, if Youtube itself takes it away from me I'm going to just stop watching Youtube.
-
Revance if you're on android man. I mean I pay for premium but I still use it to patch the app at least.
-
I'm using Grayjay on android, I wonder how the feature set compares to Revanced? I like that Grayjay has sponsorblock built in.
-
-
On desktop, check out VacuumTube which is app that acts as a wrapper for YouTube Leanback (tv/console version) and has ad blocking built in.
-
-
I finally gave up when they started blanking out my home page as I turned off history... I don't even miss it
-
GTK. I think they flagged my account since I share it with my spouse and some of my basic features disappeared recently like mini-player in the browser. I might need to unsubscribe and just rely on Firefox with an ad blocker. Nebula and Patreon are good alternatives as well.
-
I noticed that too. Thought it was just regular YouTube jank as usual.
-
-
Netflix trend
-
Go on vacation? Believe it or not, banned.
-
Living in a dormitory? Belive it or not, also banned.
-
-
God forbid you have a parent who's living away from home for work purposes who's using that subscription
-
Yeah and you are also already paying for a set number of people that can use the account so why would it make a difference where they live? My brother is still my family even if we don't live in the same state. They didn't call it a household plan
-
They don't care about whether they live with you or not. It's about providing less service than what you're paying for. Like how mobile carriers say, "unlimited data" -- *after 25GB, we [may] slow your connection speed to 256kbps. So this way, it's "5 accounts" -- *they must physically live with you. So now you're paying for 5 accounts, where 3 or 4 of them technically are unusable.
Why? Money. Those other people who you would have shared with now need to get their own account(s). Suddenly, "profits are through the roof!" -- until the next big squeeze. At this point, Google is squeezing its customers like a dry tube of toothpaste.
-
-
-
I just got a notification that Amazon Prime is doing the same with grandafathered accounts allowed across households.
-
Run a personal VPN server at the home address and have external users route through it. I'd think it'd work for any subscription service doing this crap. I'm surprised nobody has started selling a turnkey self-hosted VPN device that even a non-techie can get running in a few steps - all the end users would need is an app that does split tunneling for the media players.
-
I live 10000km from my mom, it's just not efficient
-
I'm thinking of doing the same but the issue is setting up the policy based routing so that only YouTube goes through that VPN.
-
-
My entire extended family shares a single household and a single Internet connection. /s
-
Well fuck. It never crossed my mind that YouTube would do this since I don’t view it the same as other traditional streaming services. This will really suck for my friends who I’ve happily let mooch off my plan for years.
-
More people need to use Peertube.
-
Peertube needs monetization and the ability for people peer without self-hosting. A torrent client of sorts.
The product, in it's current form cannot replace Youtube. Youtube gives you traffic, a free place to host even your crappiest footage, and money if enough people start watching it regularly.
Peertube isn't free, it's just someone else footing the bill, which breaks under load.
-
-
Meanwhile I installed the User Agent Switcher extension for firefox to change my user agent every 30 seconds to something random to avoid tracking. A few websites don’t accept it. I just quit those websites and find a non-billionaire-owned alternative like Kagi or Fastmail. So far it’s working out well.
-
That likely makes you easier to track. User agents don't really matter all that much if an advanced tracking script is used. When your IP address is the same, your browser engine is the same, your canvas data stays the same, your window size stays the same, your operating system stays the same, then they will just know that you also use an extension that makes your user agent not reflect your system and track you based on that too.
Use Mullvad Browser without changing anything important (change the default search engine at most) and preferably use a proper VPN to actually avoid tracking during regular internet usage. Or use LibreWolf to at least fool naive scripts.
I would suggest reading this too:
https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/3.3-Overrides-%5BTo-RFP-or-Not%5D-
How is that easier? That’s just only very slightly harder, not easier. Most sites will not have such sophisticated logic. And anyway, the purpose is to suss out which websites do this kind of tracking and avoid them entirely, not to thwart the tracking.
-
YT forces me to login if I am using a VPN these days, if I use Firefox or Safari. Brave avoids this. I will have to try Mullvad.
-
-
-
It's always nice when the garbage takes itself out. And if you're inconvenienced, I feel for you, but the writing has been on the wall for years. They will keep trying to suck more money out of you every way they can until you cancel your subscription, and because that's going to happen in the end, why not cancel it today.
-
Seems there is a market for spoofing specific IP addresses out there. What if they don't know you are not at home? I ha e no clue how any of this works...
-
You just install tailscale on a home computer, tell it it's an exit node. Install tailscale on your phone and your laptop and whatever other computers you have.
Boom, VPN home and use your home IP.
-
-
If you watch vapid slop content on Youtube, that's on you. Don't blame Youtube for giving you what you apparently want. I watch howto's, "edutainment", science and engineering stuff, conference talks, and overall generally positive, helpful content. This is a totally different thing from Netflix, which is mostly just fiction. I'd never pay a subscription for that. The cost of Premium seems like a fair value for what I get out of it, especially since creators get a higher payout for Premium views.
Yeah, Google still tracks you. So does absolutely everyone else, including your ISP that you're paying for. Until you make it illegal, that isn't going to change. I'm not going to put everything on hold waiting for better consumer protection laws, shit's way too dysfunctional for that to be realistic. Life isn't perfect.
-
K
-
-
I used to be an a friend's planning exchange for sharing Disney plus. But he booted me after I kept putting weird shit on his family calendar.
"Wash that thing on your back that's hard to reach and puts out a putrid smell."
"Soak feet in melted butter."
I've been a premium member since then. I've been watching the battle with ad blockers from the sidelines.
Who is winning that battle? This will inform my next move.
226 comments
I have to hand it to them, they are really good at finding new, innovative ways to make the platform worse.
Deactivated Premium recently. I used their music app when driving – expecting some ads now - nope, it just doesn’t allow running in the background anymore.
Seems like such a hostile thing - I’d like to think running ads would be a positive net income for them. (Now that I think of it - maybe they don’t have it built out into their music service.)
Revanced
Makes me long for the days of google music. It just worked. Streamed stuff and even allowed you to stream your own library that you had stored in drive. I would use that in the car. Then they ditched it for YouTube music, which was a worse experience and lacked the features.
If you pay, the platform remains great. I get a discounted YouTube premium membership through my mobile phone company. I think YouTube is great, I never see ads, lots of features.
Just to offer an alternative view.
I pay nothing for YouTube and don't get ads. YMMV
Wow, shilling for YouTube premium and anti-net-neutrality (the "discount through your phone company" part) in one comment.
I get the same with firefox and an ad blocker for free
Weird number of downvotes here -- I thought they were meant for low-effort or non contributive comments, not an "I disagree" button. This person is giving a unique perspective as a subscriber (in this thread, anyway) and should be met with curiosity, I think. It is helpful to know that there are people who enjoy paying for it, so thanks for giving your opinion here.
I disagree because they have a dominant position for reasons other than having a good product -- they squash competition trying to make the space better while themselves actively making it worse. Subscribing means supporting that style of inhibiting innovation, not to mention the other user-hostile practices they embrace (extend, extinguish). They are an ad company and obligated to make a profit, I get that, but I refuse to abide this style of using investor money to operate at a loss for years while deceptively capturing the market before raising prices. If your product is good, it shouldn't need to be artificially propped up.
I'm OK with your opinion and I appreciate hearing an alternate view to offset the echo chamber effect.
But for a lot of us, or at least me, its far deeper than just cost and ads.
It's the fact that steps keep being taken to make the platform worse. They don't want the platform usable unless you pay, and in this case they're even taking a stab at the people who pay...you don't pay enough in their mind.
If they had balls, they would just make it a closed platform. Pay to access, and restrict that per account IP. But they'd rather gaslight everybody and slowly turn up he heat so the frogs don't jump out of the pot. This way they maximize their profits for longer. Point of all of that is, they don't care about he platform or service at all.
For me, its not even about that. Their algorithm was so jacked up I was sick of being fed videos I didn't want to see over and over, and videos I've already watched over and over. That's why they added the subscription bell...because you would subscribe to things you wanted to watch and they never showed it to you. It wasn't "you" tube it was "their" tube.
I bailed on them years ago. I still watch some content on there because there really isn't a viable alternative. I use a scraper that gives me a feed of just what I want and without ads. I watch what I like and move on with my day. I'm back in control of my video viewing.
Do you have a means of removing sponsors on the mobile app though? Revanced has sponsorblock and adblock in the app.
Do you pay them or did they pay you?